Prioritizing Pleasure

I have decided to take the month of April and describe a little bit of my journey as I begin my advanced training in Somatic Sex Education. After my first week of exploring gender, I peeked ahead to look at our next assignment. My first thought was.... AWESOME!

 

The task was to make time for four personal erotic exploration sessions within a week.

 

Best homework ever, right?

 

My body was excited, I was excited. It was permission to spend time pleasuring myself! I’m really not sure why I needed permission, but it felt fun and liberating to have it ‘assigned’ as homework.

 

Then I looked at my schedule for the coming week. (For those of you who don’t know me personally, I’m kind of a workaholic. Plus I singlehandedly nurture and support four young women, my daughters). This was going to be impossible!!

Fortunately, my stubbornness kicked in at this point, and I began to secretly plan all the moments that I could get away on my own, or at least think my own thoughts, in the coming week. I blocked off an hour at work here, I carved out a half hour there. I was determined to get my four sessions in! I decided my intention could be to explore how to make time for my sexual self, as a busy, single, working mom.

 

The first time slot came, I had just managed to get two kids off to school, and a third off to work. The oldest had gone back to her apartment for the week. I had an hour before I had to leave for work. Perfect!

 

I finished the last dregs of coffee, left the dirty dishes on the counter, and ran downstairs to my room. I could feel my excitement mounting with the thought of what was to come. I found a recording of Rumi poetry I had decided to listen to as I love the idea of spirituality and sexuality coming together. I stripped off and climbed under the covers as it was kind of chilly. Ahhh.... nice.

 

Then, my phone beeped a text message. Ugh, I picked it up, wondering who DARED to interrupt my precious alone time. It was the landlord, saying he would be over in 10 minutes to look at the furnace.

 

Ten minutes!! That was not long. I was disappointed that my first session was to be curtailed already, but I was far enough along that I decided to complete my ‘exploration’. I can’t say that there wasn’t some added intensity, knowing that I could be interrupted by the landlord at any minute.

 

I pulled on my clothes and slightly out of breath ran up to answer the door a few seconds later. I had to chuckle inside at the way the universe had such a twisted sense of humour. Was it too much to ask, for a brief time to enjoy myself? I shook my head, and carried on with my day. I did feel a low-level buzz from the whole thing, which was kind of cool in its own way. And hey, this is the reality of modern-day life!

 

The rest of my week was not much better. Although after learning from my first escapade, I booked an entire morning off work one day and made up for lost time. It was extremely hard to fit in four sessions in a week, even for me, a dedicated sexual enthusiast! I did, at least, have direct experience of how our sex lives can be derailed so easily. Without commitment and perseverance and a good sense of humour, life can get in the way for all of us.

 

And this, I decided laughingly, was my lesson for week two. Making time for sex and pleasure takes making it a priority!

So, you know what to do (wink) Prioritize!

 

With pleasure,

Ailsa